John Frieda Colour Renew Shampoo & Conditioner Review

So, a few months back, towards the end of last year I decided I needed a bit of a radical change and bleached my naturally medium-dark brown hair to become a blonde for the first time in my life. It took a total of three (!!!) bleaches until I finally achieved the result I was aiming for.
Chuffed that I'd managed to put my hair through such an ordeal without it falling out or snapping off (my hair is tough as nails, apparently), imagine how p'ed off I was when after every single wash it started turning distinctively more yellow. As it turns out, hard water can really enhance any brassiness on bleached hair and living in Southwest London the water here is so hard you could easily knock someone out with a splash of tap water. A few people recommended using a purple shampoo, so off I went to my local Boots and stocked up on the John Frieda Colour Renew Tone Correcting shampoo - and the conditioner as well, just for good measure.

To make a long story short, both of these completely failed me. The shampoo does have a distinctive  bright purple colour, whereas the conditioner is more of a lavender shade. It's recommended to use it once or twice a week to eliminate any brassiness.
After the first use, I noticed no difference whatsoever. I thought that maybe I hadn't left them on for long enough, so next time I left both the shampoo and the conditioner to work a little bit longer. Sure enough, some of the yellowness was eliminated, but instead, my hair had gone orange.

Naturally, it didn't occur to me to blame the products, but I thought it was just the water, or that the dye job had been botched somehow. So, in an attempt to get rid of the orange hue, I kept on using it more and more until one day it occurred to me to just try a regular shampoo. Lo and behold, the orangeness diminished.
As for hair conditioning properties, both the shampoo and the conditioner performed alright, though were nowhere near as nourishing as I'd expect for a product aimed at bleached (and therefore damaged) hair.
All in all a big fat thumbs down from me. If you want to eliminate yellow tones in your hair just to make it orange instead, go for it, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend these to anybody.
I've since tried a different purple and shampoo combo by Lee Stafford and they both perform brilliantly, so expect a review soon.

These retail at £5.89 each per 250ml tube. I noticed that both the shampoo and the conditioner have since been repackaged, though I don't know if they've been reformulated as well.

Do you have bleached hair, and if so, how do you care for it?

Rimmel Wake Me Up Concealer Review

As soon as it launched, Rimmel's Wake Me Up Foundation caused quite a bit of a stir in the beauty world, being hailed as a nice light to medium coverage foundation that gives a lovely glow to tired and dull skin. I haven't heard an awful lot about the concealer in the range, but was eager to find out just what it could do for my dark and tired undereyes after picking it up at the drugstore.

The shade I went for was 010 Ivory, the lightest in the bunch. The texture of the concealer is very light, but without being overly runny, which makes for easy application using the doe foot applicator. Three dabs under each eye, a little bit of patting in and I'm good to go.

The thing about this concealer is that it's not overly heavy, so it won't offer a ton of coverage. On the plus side, this also means absolutely no creasing or caking, though I did find it wore off after about four to five hours of wear, even when I set it with loose powder.
Instead of masking dark circles with heavy coverage it instead provides an iridescent glow that aims to draw attention away from them. And boy, as far as concealers are concerned, this is probably as iridescent as they come.

I hope the swatch gives you a slight idea of just how shimmery this product is. At first I thought I'd been experiencing fallout from my eye shadows, but then it kept appearing even when I was wearing matte shades or no shadow at all.
The thing that made me ruffle my imaginary beard a little is the fact that I've seen several supposedly professional make-up artists using this in their Youtube videos for covering up blemishes. I don't mean to be a bitch here, because I am by no means a trained make-up artist, but please do not use shimmery concealers on spots. It's like drawing a large fat sign on your face that says "Woooo I have spots! And I made them SPARKLE!!!", so why the heck are they doing it?!

Under the eyes a little bit of vampire sparkle doesn't hurt, but I would never ever use this on red patches or blemishes, which means that annoyingly I now have to use a separate product for those problem areas. On the upside this doubles up as a very subtle highlight on cheekbones and the cupid's bow when in a pinch.

Rimmel's Wake Me Up Concealer retails at £5.49 and is available in four shades.

Have you tried this concealer? What did you think?

March Wishlist

Mesh Leopard Print Top, Forever21, £11 // Fake Diamond "Wings" Double Ring, Romwe, £16 // Trudy Jumper, Monki, £22 // Large Jewellery Box with drawer, Urban Outfitters, £40 // Evil Twin Dry Lightning Skater Skirt, Urban Outfitters, £55 // Grey Studded Collar Leather Look Biker Jacket, River Island, £65

This month features a surprising collection of items I need, rather than just want. Like this gorgeous (faux) leather jacket. I made it through all of winter without a coat, just because I don't like the one I have anymore and I didn't quite get round to buying a new one. So instead I just layered up like crazy to stay warm and as a result my current leather jacket is extremely worn out (and not in the cool vintage-looking way). I love the studs on this River Island version and the light grey colour instead of plain ol' black.

Another need item? Some sort of jewellery storage. I've been buying quite a bit of jewellery lately, but without anywhere to store it properly, it's all been getting tangled up in a corner of my nightstand drawer. What I like about this one is that it doesn't take up ridiculous amounts of space like those jewellery trees/hands/mini statues and the gorgeous tiffany-esque blue colour. Not that I have any Tiffany's jewellery to put in there, but a girl can dream, right?

And lastsly, not strictly speaking a "need", but I've realised that I no longer own a single skirt since my recent wardrobe overhaul, and long sleeved tops are also a little sparse now. The thing that keeps me off buying either of those is the fact that they tend to just be so, well... boring. Fortunately, this can't be said about the tie-dye type print on this Urban Outfitters skirt, or the amazing neon green colour of the Monki sweater. Anything neon and you'll find me all over it.

As for the rings and the cut-out mesh top? I just think they're pretty amazing. And a girl can never have too many pretty things, right?

Monthly Favourites: February 13

Phew, February really whizzed past me and I had to seriously scratch my head to find some favourites to talk about this month. Fortunately there's been a lot of shiny new beauty stuff I got to try out last month and some of them have turned out to be real gems, even if the brand distribution isn't very wide this month.

1) Lee Stafford Bleach Blondes Shampoo & Conditioner

My hair's been bleached a total of three times now, plus one root touch up and every single time it went about three to four shades darker as well as incredibly yellow after a few hair washes. I was using purple shampoo and conditioner every single wash to get rid of the brassiness, but if anything, the one I was using only made things worse (John Frieda, if you'd like to know - full review will follow).

Finally, this is one that brings my hair back to a lovely, natural blonde shade, with not a hint of yellow in sight. It only takes one weekly application and my colour stays the way I want it to stay. I highly recommend it for anyone with bleached hair, it's a must-buy!

2) Biotherm Blue Therapy Serum

Unfortunately, this is just a sample and it is now well and truly nearing its end. I still haven't bought a full sized serum to add to my skincare routine, but I'm more than happy to use up any samples I get. This one's been doing a lot of good work with my skin. I felt a difference after the second application, which is pretty incredible. My skin felt softer and in a way more taut and... energised (???). It doesn't leave any sticky residue, but sinks into the skin immediately leaving it silky soft and smooth, a lot like a perfectly ripe peach. Mmmmmmmh, peaches..... 

3) Soap & Glory Sugar Crush Body Scrub

After a few not-so-scrubby duds I have finally met my exfoliation match. You see, when it comes to face and body scrubs I like it rough. Really, really rough, har har. This scrub is beautifully grainy and will slough away dead skin and any other rubbish that may be lingering around within seconds. It leaves my skin so, so soft, and leaves a hint of oil on the body, which personally, I love. Oh, and did I mention it smells like mojitos?

4) Soap & Glory The Righteous Body Butter

Another Soap & Glory product - as a matter of fact they were bought together. This is mainly a favourite because it just smells so good. It's not a fruity scent I would usually go for, but nevertheless perfectly sweet without being sickly.

Other than smell good, it's also got the perfect texture for dry winter skin: Rich, thick and creamy. Admittedly it does take a bit of elbow grease to really massage it in, but the results are definitely worth it and it sinks in fairly quick. Just don't try getting into skinny jeans straight after using it.

Sunday Catch-Up #10

Camera stall in Camden // Tattoo's booked in, can't wait! // Finally got myself an Oyster card // Late night munchies // New look Elle // Comfort food // Valentine's chocolates (sadly not from the boyfriend) // Parcels // Hate being ill // Neon yellow nails


I forgot to publish a catch-up type post last week, so I'm making up for it with two weeks' worth of Instagram pictures in one. Blog posts have been relatively sparse lately, as I've been working loads and as soon as I got home and got warm and comfy I pretty much drifted off to sleep straight away. I've also left my camera charger at my parents' house, so now I've got to wait until I can use my camera again - how annoying??

In other news, last week I was ill for the majority of the time, for the second time this year despite all my efforts to avoid the cold everyone around me was catching. I also managed to mess up my hair and had to have an emergency appointment to get it fixed at the hairdressers. On this note can I just thoroughly recommend Stylelounge for anyone who lives in south-west London? Nick sorted my hair beautifully without any of the snidy comments and pitying glances you'd get at a lot of other salons. I'll post some pictures as soon as my camera is juiced up again.

Valentine's Day was pretty dull as I expected. The boyfriend was at work all day and as we'd both agreed that it's a pretty pointless occasion it was pretty much like every other day in our lives. I did enjoy my Lindt chocolates that came in the post in the morning, though.

This week I managed to finally book in for my next tattoo, which I've been going on about to everyone around me for ages. Expect a big fat blog post with plenty of pictures once it's done on Wednesday!

What have you been up to this week?